


Overwhelm (destroying so sweetly)

by acroamatica, CyanideBreathmint



Series: Just Don't Put Down Your Guns, Yet [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ace!Phasma, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Just filth, M/M, Modern AU, Multi, No Angst, OT3, Poe Dameron is a sex god, Suitporn, contains poetry, extractionverse, gunporn, sheer filth, utter trashy smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:37:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5778994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acroamatica/pseuds/acroamatica, https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/pseuds/CyanideBreathmint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Forger Poe Dameron has worked with many different people in the span of his career, but he certainly hasn’t worked with anyone quite like Bren Hux, chemist extraordinaire. This is an Inception-styled AU, modern setting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overwhelm (destroying so sweetly)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Douce Destruction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057505) by [Eridani](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridani/pseuds/Eridani)



> This is an Inception-style setting AU. Mind heists, bespoke suits and gunporn. Ren is the extractor, Rey is the architect, Phasma and Finn take point, Poe is the forger and Hux is the chemist.
> 
> The sonnet that Ren wrote onto Hux’s back was written by the amazing acroamatica. 
> 
> Title taken from Franz Ferdinand’s _This Fire_. We’re gonna burn this city, burn this city. 
> 
> Given that I wrote vast amounts of Arthur/Eames fic for Inception before I wound up sucked down the Kylux trash chute, you knew this was going to happen eventually.

Truism of extraction work: Everyone you meet in the field will be a beautiful and unique snowflake, each unusual in different ways because of the heterogeneous ways rival governments, agencies and syndicates all train their own dreamshare operatives. 

Corollary of the above: Much leeway is granted because the skills and talents required to work in dreamshare are uncommon ones – good extractors don’t grow on trees or hatch from cabbages, and if they do their jobs correctly and aren’t a threat to operational security, then almost anyone can wind up in the field. 

Poe Dameron knew these things to be true because he was another one of those unusual people. Forgers were uncommon even in the extraction world, every one of them a rarity in a minority made up of rarities – few possessed a sense of self secure enough to withstand the shifting arenas of others’ dreams and nightmares, let alone the facile mind and human understanding to slide into other skins while doing so. 

Poe was proud of his abilities, and he liked to think he did a good job. It wasn’t as though he had been trained in some back-alley basement by former regime personnel under the influence of bootleg somnacin. No, Poe possessed a M.Sc in Psychology from Columbia, had pondered embarking on a PhD before the NSA had drawn him into their fledgling dreamshare initiative. He had trained with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico before its disbanding in 2014. People were his purview, his bread and butter and his absolute delight. 

Dreamshare had allowed him to turn that interest and fascination with the myriad expressions of humanity into an obsession, transform the space in his dreams into an endless living catalog that thrilled his imagination and occasionally took his breath away. 

Poe started filing away the details the first time he met Kylo Ren, Hux and Phasma in an afternoon tea that turned into an armed standoff. (This sort of occurrence was happening far too frequently for Poe to be entirely comfortable with, but it came with the job.) Ren struck him as tallness in deliberate monochrome, without any hint of the apologetic stoop so many tall thin men developed. His long legs sprawled out under the table as though he had no clue where to put them. Ren had ink-stained fingers on long graceful hands; chipped black nail polish (to hide the scrim of ink under his fingernails, Poe thought), and a glorious, unruly fleece of black hair that bounced and curled on his shoulders. His hair shone like silk against the fulled charcoal wool of his jacket, contrasted with the expanse of blanched-almond skin showing over the round neck of his black t-shirt. A silver wallet chain gleamed against his right hip, the links complex and interlocking, rope-like. The only color he affected was the red in the band logo on his shirt, the blue-gray finish of the Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan he had drawn and left atop the table but not aimed at anyone in particular. Poe had glanced at the cylinder of that revolver, noting that Kylo Ren had only six shots before reloading, but those six shots would probably drop anything short of a raging musk ox. Hunters carried these revolvers for protection in bear country. 

Phasma sat, pale guardian in white and gold to the left of Ren. She was just as tall as him, her white-blonde hair worn short and sleek, her hands callused and determinedly un-manicured. Her only makeup was lipstick, her lips a splash of crimson across her fair, leonine face. She wore a man’s oversized white cargo jacket over her own pearl-gray pinstripe suit, waist nipped in severely and flatteringly to highlight the curves of her athletic figure. Phasma’s choice of gun suited her well – a stainless steel-finished Springfield Armory 1911 with golden-brown horn grips, and Poe had to admit that she aimed it with remarkable coolness and steadiness even as he gazed down the bore of the .45 caliber barrel. 

That had left Hux, red-haired and vulpine, quick fox to Kylo Ren’s hungry wolf and Phasma’s magnificent lioness. His cold blue eyes stared Finn and his Beretta M9A1 down over the sights of a Browning Hi-Power, one chambered in .40 S&W from the look of it. The herringbone weave of his Harris tweed jacket looked gray at first, but Poe noticed hints of green in the flecking especially where the sleeves contrasted with the spotless white of his shirt’s French cuffs. Hux was almost as pale as the fabric of his shirt, the veins on the back of his hands shadowy blue under Wedgwood skin. 

Of particular interest to Poe was the broad leather bracelet that he wore on his left wrist over his steel watch, the band secured with a press-stud. The cuff was English bridle leather, supple and shiny with a faint waxy bloom from long use, and with a sudden jolt Poe realized that it was a strop. He visualized Hux taking it off, wrapping it over the knuckles of his left hand while he worked a knife blade, coaxing it infinitely sharper. Right trouser pocket, Poe thought, which meant that Hux probably carried a straight razor instead of a knife. Pearl handle, Poe thought, glancing at the gray shell buttons on Hux’s raw silk waistcoat. He had no real proof for that assumption except for a compulsive stab of aesthetic symmetry.

Phasma may have been the heavy of Kylo Ren’s team, but Hux was the quiet, dangerous one and the quiet, dangerous ones were the ones to constantly watch. Not that Hux was making it difficult to watch him. Poe could not help but notice the delicate shadows on his face shaded almost violet like watercolor paints, the vivid outline of a fresh bruise on the side of his neck peeking red and blue-black just over the stiff collar of his shirt. His eyes had fixed on it, his mind wondering automatically who had left it on Hux’s neck, Phasma, or Ren? And then Hux had noticed Poe’s gaze, turned those icy eyes to meet his. The faintest quirk of a smile hung on the left side of his mouth, and Poe had, rather frankly, stopped caring about whom and started thinking very hard about _how._

\---

“You’re very confident, Doctor Dameron,” Hux had said across the table in his direction once the guns had been put away. Each cut-glass syllable was soft, enunciated carefully. The accent was not an affectation – Poe wasn’t sure, but he started going through English public schools mentally, imagined Hux as a student at one. Marlborough?

“Perhaps?” Poe shrugged. “And it’s Mister Dameron, although I prefer Poe. I never got around to my PhD.” 

“You didn’t draw when we did,” Hux continued. Harrow? Repton?

And then it was Poe’s turn to smile, lopsided, as he lifted his left hand from his lap to reveal the sub-compact SIG P938 he had drawn from a pocket holster, laid it gently down on the tabletop. 

“Touché,” Hux said, one of his brows arched ever so slightly, hint of amusement and faint exasperation. 

_Excellent,_ Poe thought.

\---

“I think you have a crush on Hux,” Rey had said that evening over dinner. She ran the toe of her shoe carefully up the side of Poe’s leg, under the table, and he shivered faintly at the touch.

“No I don’t,” Poe protested over the rim of his wineglass. It was obligatory in their little games of give-and-take for him to at least affect innocence in the beginning. It was more fun that way. 

Finn regarded Poe from his spot across the table, laid his fork down on his unfinished plate. “You spent more time staring at him than you did at Phasma. Who, I’d like to remind you, was pointing a 1911 in your face.” 

“I was looking at that leather bracelet on his left wrist, under his shirt cuff,” Poe said. He put his wineglass down and gestured on his own wrist. “I think it’s a strop.”

“A strop for a knife?” Rey guessed. She forked up more linguine, rolled it into a neat little bundle before she ate it. 

“Straight razor, I think, right pants pocket,” Poe supplied, glanced back at Finn for confirmation of his suspicions. “He also has his Browning in a right-hand draw shoulder rig.” Poe preferred to carry his SIG P220 with an inside-waistband holster behind his right hip, but being ambidextrous he also carried his backup gun in a pocket holster in his left trouser pocket.

“I noticed,” Finn said. “That’s a .40 for sure.” Rey raised an eyebrow at Finn, waited for his explanation. “Slide’s heavier than the 9mms. There’s a groove machined into the left side of the slide on those models, clearance for the slide release.” 

Rey wiped at her lips with her napkin again, shrugged. “At least Kylo Ren picked a classy throat-cutter?” 

“Actually, _Doctor_ Bren Hux the classy throat-cutter picked Kylo Ren,” Finn corrected, “They’ve been working together since the beginning, along with Phasma. They’re all three Snoke’s students from when he worked with the CIA.” 

“The things you know, Finn,” Poe smiled, fully aware that as pointman, this was the kind of thing Finn was paid to know, “What kind of doctorate?” he asked, still curious even now, “Jurisprudence? Chemistry?”

“Medical,” Finn cut himself another morsel of roast pork, ate it, washed it down with more water from his glass. Finn never drank alcohol while he was on the job. “Although I don’t think he’s too concerned with the Hippocratic Oath at this point. Old Etonian. Has an MB BChir from Cambridge. Anesthesiologist. Hux never entered practice, however. Went straight from graduation to taking the Queen’s shilling, and the Brits loaned him to the CIA when their team needed a chemist.” 

“Something something old boy networks,” Rey muttered glumly. She stabbed at a mussel in her plate, prised the tender morsel of meat out from the shell with her fork and knife. 

“It’s not like we don’t have those,” Finn told her as he forked up some chestnut stuffing, “They just revolve around Ivies instead of public schools.”

“I wonder if it’s true, though, what they say about former public school boys,” Poe grinned after he ate another bite of his own salmon Florentine. 

“It’s not like we’re stopping you from finding out,” Finn told him, his expression just a little lascivious as he sipped more water, eyebrow arched meaningfully in a way that always made Poe’s pulse beat a little faster.

“As long as you don’t come back to us with your throat slit,” Rey agreed, and now she was glancing intently at him, too. It wasn’t fair, the way the both of them ganged up on him like this. 

Poe protested, another forkful of fish halfway to his mouth. “I’m not that annoying,” he said.

“Most of the time, you aren’t,” Rey shrugged, “But when you are…” She ate another mussel, followed that with another bundle of linguine.

“What we’re saying is maybe you should use that clever mouth to eat yourself out of trouble, instead of flirting your way into it,” Finn suggested.

“Finn!” Rey had laughed, amused and scandalized in equal amounts. 

“It’s true,” Finn shrugged, and then Poe was laughing, too as he abandoned all thoughts of self-defense, unable to refute the assertion.

\---

In most cases Poe did not subscribe to the belief that pulling someone’s pigtails was the best way to court them. From his point of view that was a problematic acceptance of usually-masculine violence against usually-female targets, sanctioned because of the misconception that sentimentality excused unpleasantness. Besides, he had left first grade behind a very long time ago, and saw no point in regressing to his childhood.

Hux, however, wore his reserve like armor and wielded his devastating wit and Received Pronounciation accent like a scalpel. To know him meant having to take his measure, and taking his measure required some kind of crack in that impenetrable exterior. Poe watched him line up the chemicals in his chemist’s nook in their shared workshop, each bottle placed a precise, equal amount apart, and he sensed a chink in that armor. 

Impertinence, Poe thought, not rudeness. Rudeness would cause Hux to simply shrug him off as a boor and dismiss further efforts. But impertinence, carefully aimed at his weaknesses, aimed to amuse? That would lever the cracks apart slowly, allow Poe a better glimpse at what lay beneath that reserve. That would allow him to study the anatomy of Bren Hux’s thoughts, find out what would excite and thrill him the most. 

Rey had once jokingly accused Poe of flirting with people the way lepidopterists caught butterflies – to pin them down and study them intimately, categorize them and file them away in his mind. That had been true enough, but then, Poe was a forger and people were his medium. To forge, he had to know. And to know, sometimes he also had to _know._ That had been a condition of every one of his relationships since before his instatement as the NSA’s pet forger, and it was also a condition that persisted in his current arrangement with Rey and Finn. They loved him, and he loved them back with an intensity he had never experienced before, but he would not be exclusive to them. 

“It’d be cruel to cage you,” Finn had told him one lazy afternoon as they lay tucked like spoons, Rey dozing gently against Poe’s chest. 

“Am I your pretty songbird, then?” Poe had teased in a low whisper, so as not to wake Rey.

“Well, you know I can make you sing like a canary,” Finn laughed, and Poe had no answer to that. Rey’s hair smelled like strawberries and cream, and Finn behind him had smelled like bergamot and ginger, like Earl Grey and gingersnaps, and the sheets were warm and comfortable as the rain beat against the windowpanes outside their hotel room.

\---

In his days of study Poe had discovered a lot of things about Hux. Just how much intrusion into his personal space he would tolerate before becoming frustrated. The exact amount of archness required to amuse him without angering him entirely. The clean smoky pine, birch and cedar of his cologne, underscored oddly with a flirty, floral note of violets. (That blend of smells made Poe think of gunshots in a winter forest for some unaccountable reason, the popping reports swallowed up by a dense, heavy snowfall.)

Today Poe observed how Hux reclined odalisque on one of the lawn chairs they had brought into their workplace, the bottom button of his waistcoat undone. The overhead lights had winked off the buttons of his trouser fly and off the polished patent leather of his spectator boots, bounced off the pale slub silk of his shirt and his translucent pallor. 

He had reclined with a manila folder in his left hand, while holding an antique cigarette holder in his right, bright-polished silver. Smoldering gently at the end of the cigarette holder was a tightly-rolled joint, and the end of it had blazed firefly-bright as Hux took another long toke from it, his mouth pursed obscenely around the amber mouthpiece. His cufflinks had matched the cigarette holder, Poe noticed – cabochons of amber set in hand-planished silver. 

_What kind of man smokes marijuana from a cigarette holder?_ Poe’s mind had wondered, amazed, and then Kylo Ren had wandered over to Hux, to the lawn chair, and bent himself gracefully at the waist to accept a long shotgun of resinous smoke from Hux’s lips. Ren’s dark hair had veiled Hux’s face for a moment then, and they lingered briefly like that, Hux looking softly back at Ren leaning over him as wisps of smoke curled between them. Then Ren turned back to the dossiers Phasma had brought back, and Hux had lifted his cigarette holder to his mouth again for a long, slow drag. He looked straight at Poe, caught him staring, and then exhaled a perfect smoke ring with a flick of his tongue, louche, extravagant, untouchable.

Poe thought that the moment with Kylo Ren had been a signal, and that Hux would ask him to stop flirting, to cease those tiny invasions of his personal space, but he had not. Instead, he had opened up just a little. “My mind. It works too fast sometimes,” Hux said by way of explanation. He stood beside the desk Poe shared with Rey as he tucked the empty cigarette holder back into an inside pocket of his suit jacket, his pale hand glowing, almost, against the rich sheen of the dark gray habutai silk lining. 

“Too fast?” Poe asked in response, recognizing the opportunity that Hux had graciously granted him.

“Like a pocket watch wound too tightly,” Hux said, “It ticks over too fast. One can’t think clearly like that.” Maybe Hux just didn’t want Poe to think of him as a stoner, as though he weren’t already the furthest thing from one, with his cold hauteur and elegance.

Poe smiled, shook his head, “Some people call that anxiety, Dr. Hux. Are you self-medicating?” He meant that as a gentle tease, said it carefully as he felt out the boundaries of Hux’s prickly self. 

“Benzodiazepines are a bad idea with regular somnacin use,” Hux said as though Poe had been absolutely serious. “Not absolutely contraindicated, but a bad idea especially when sedatives are involved.” A twinkle in his pale blue eyes offset the seriousness in his voice and the precision of his accent.

“Point,” Poe shrugged. It wasn’t as though he made the habit of judging others for their drug use in most cases, not especially something soft like weed, and besides, he got the feeling that Hux was probably one of the most functional people he had ever met. 

“You can be surprisingly pleasant when you’re not being purposefully obtuse, Dameron,” Hux said. 

“Does this mean that you like me now?” Poe asked half-seriously, “And call me Poe, please.”

Hux half-closed his eyes, his expression pensive, and Poe found himself noticing the length of his eyelashes, pondered how they would feel, tiny butterfly touch brushing faint against his cheek. “I don’t know if I can say I like you,” Hux said at last, “But you amuse me, Poe Dameron, which is why I put up with you presently.”

That was somewhat encouraging, Poe thought, and he smiled despite himself as Hux turned away from him to return to the sanctuary of his chemist’s nook, manila folder in hand. He wondered if Kylo Ren appreciated how lucky he was, was sure that he did. Hux would remind him of that constantly if he ever let it lapse, Poe was sure.

\---

The heating in their workshop malfunctioned three days later, pinning the inside temperature to a parched, uncomfortable 80-plus degrees. Poe had simply taken off his suit jacket to cope and shrugged off the heat – he had spent his undergraduate years in North Carolina, and from his personal experience this dry heat was still preferable to the oppressive humidity of summer in the American South.

Rey hadn’t minded it much either – she had only commented that the heat made the glue on her architectural models cure faster. Growing up in the New Mexico desert had given her a heat tolerance beyond Poe’s or Finn’s, and she had taken a sly sort of pleasure in watching them both wilt and moan during particularly oppressive weather. Poe suspected that she had been uncomfortable as he had been during more excessive kinds of heat and humidity but had merely kept her cool exterior just to spite him. 

Poe started to understand the enjoyment Rey took in her superior heat tolerance, however, as he watched Hux try to work through the malfunctioning thermostat in the workshop. His chemist’s nook had been placed inconveniently close to a heating vent, and he fidgeted uncomfortably on the spot as he watched Kylo Ren sleep reclining on a lawn chair, deep under and hooked up to a PASIV. The infusion pump built into the device hissed and whirred softly, and Ren had taken his own jacket and sweater off, exposing the pale skin of his inner arms. Poe saw the raised criss-crossing lines of healed scars, pink and silvery against the warmth of Ren’s skin, visible even from his vantage point at Rey’s desk. 

Those scars were still fairly new, and Poe realized that those were not from self-injury, that they would all line up if Ren raised both his arms up and across to protect his head and neck. Old defensive injuries, Poe thought, wondered who had stitched those up. Hux was a doctor, a qualified physician, would definitely be handy with a needle and surgical sutures. And then all thoughts of stitches fled his mind as Hux started to take off his suit jacket. He shrugged the charcoal wool of his jacket off in slow ecdysis, each movement deliberate, breathtaking. The waistcoat underneath his jacket was cut from an extraordinary glen plaid wool, houndstooth and check intersecting in black and white to register as a luminous gray on the eye. The back of his waistcoat, however, was a glorious, sumptuous fabric in a foamy sea green, clouds embroidered onto it to form an intersecting tessellation of motifs, recycled kimono silk. The well-worn leather of his shoulder holster sank dark and warm into the shimmer of silk, a quiet reminder of the lethality, the sheer murder that Poe had seen in Hux’s gaze the first time they had met.

Hux left his suit jacket hanging on the back of his office chair and sat back down to check the settings on the PASIV, made a careful note on a clipboard. Poe looked back down at his notes and dossiers with an effort of will, hoping that Hux had not noticed him staring. It didn’t matter that Hux was still fully covered-up with only his face and hands showing – the revelation of his waistcoat’s lush back had been an oddly erotic experience, like the time Rey had hiked her skirt up to show the garters she had been wearing one tipsy evening months ago, a time that Poe had remembered fondly. He had knelt at her feet and kissed her knees through the cling of sheer nylon, worked his way up to the soft skin just above the lace at the tops of her stockings to find that she had only been wearing stockings and her garter belt under her little black dress that evening. The scent of her had intoxicated him, warmth and salt and sweetness under the clean anise and peppercorns, the mandrakes and boxwood of her perfume. 

He found himself wondering how Hux would smell and taste under that smoky cologne of his; sharp bite of salt and the intimate heat of his skin, what he smelled like next to Ren, whose cologne had struck Poe as a blend of wild apple and leather, civet and a dirty, boozy musk touched with the strangest, yet not-unpleasant hint of strawberry. This crush, as Rey had put it, was starting to get in the way of Poe’s actual functioning, and he gave himself over to it, fell headlong into its dizzy rush. That was how it was, always, with him. He would obsess a little over an individual, learn as much about them as he could given time and boundaries, and then all his little discoveries would go into the catalogue in his head, to be employed every time he needed to forge someone. Amused and rueful, Poe confessed to himself that his infatuation with Hux was probably borne out of the fact that he had a shameful lack of redheads in his mental repertoire.

He looked up from the photocopied pages in his dossier then to see that Hux was reaching up above his head, for an unmarked cardboard box on the top shelf of a wire rack. The reach was no problem for him, but the movement had tugged up at the bottom of his waistcoat to expose the high fishtail back of his trousers. Dark horn buttons winked from the brown leather tabs at the ends of his suspenders. On a wild, irrational impulse, Poe took his wallet from his pocket and fished out a five-Euro note, and then waited for Hux to go back to his business. Hux fished out a new set of sterile IV lines for the PASIV, vials of heparinised saline and sterilizer, left those on his desk before he turned to return the cardboard box to the wire rack. Poe stepped up then, crossed the six yards between Rey’s desk and Hux’s chemist nook quickly, and tucked the folded note in the back strap of Hux’s suspenders, under the back of his waistcoat. Hux went very still at the brief touch, but he did not reach behind his back to check what Poe had left, not until he had ensconced himself back beside the still-dreaming Ren. 

Poe had left for the relative safety of the workshop’s coffee nook, had poured himself a cup of coffee when he heard the soft scrape of bootheels behind him. He chose to ignore it, added cream to his coffee when Hux came in ostensibly to boil some water in the electric kettle. He held a folded piece of paper in his hand, and stuffed it wordlessly in Poe’s left back pocket before he busied himself with the loose-leaf tea, scooped some into a large, ball-shaped mesh infuser. 

Poe put his coffee mug down on the ring-marked table, pulled the note out and opened it. Written on it in elegant longhand was a dated invoice, marked payable to Dr. Bren Hux. The item billed for was a service labeled _putting up with your bloody cheek._ Amount payable: Five hundred pounds sterling, minus five Euros received. 

Poe grinned to himself over the invoice, folded it and handed it back to Hux. “I’m broke,” he said, “Can I work it off?”

Hux looked up at him, his gaze bright and electric, and Poe could sense the thoughts building like a thunderhead in his mind, pushing against his reserve and restraint. He bit his lower lip, an expression that Poe had employed himself to great effect. They were standing close together – close enough to almost touch – and Poe was suddenly aware of his own chiaroscuro coloration, how he stood as a contrast as a flush crept up Hux’s neck, tinted the tips of his ears, a delicate wash of pink against his watercolor skin. 

“I can think of several ways to put your cheeky mouth to use,” Hux said, his voice charged with tension, a sudden hoarseness; “It’d have the side benefit of keeping you quiet.”

Poe stepped closer to Hux, close enough to rest a hand on that lean waist, his fingers slipping on the silk of his waistcoat back. “Maybe you’ll get used to the sound of my voice if you learn how pretty I can sound?” Hux’s skin was hot even through the layers of clothing he wore. The man was a living furnace. 

“I’ll be the judge of that, Poe,” Hux whispered, before stiffening slightly and stepping back, invoice still in hand. Poe felt the moment stretch between them, thin, and then evaporate. “I need to talk to Ren,” Hux continued, businesslike, his composure firmly back in place. He tucked the invoice into one of his waistcoat pockets and turned back to his tea, to the soft roar of the electric kettle. 

“Of course,” Poe said. He took a step back himself and bowed slightly before he collected his coffee and went back to his desk to drink it, feeling oddly optimistic about his chances.

\---

Poe went out with Rey and Finn that evening again, and he did not check his burner phone until much later, as Rey sat at the dresser table and undressed. Water splashed in the adjoining bathroom, Finn in the shower. Poe would give him a little time, and then wait for the water heater to recover. This was one of the problems with living as a threesome along with the inevitable crowding in bed during the sweaty heat of high summer, the question of who got to take the back seat which days when they shared transportation, the constant weird assumptions about who did what, when and why in their relationship.

His phone screen glowed brightly in the low light as he held it in his hand. One message.

_Drinks at 9 PM tomorrow? I know a place. Hux._

“What was that?” Rey asked from her spot at the dressing table. One of her earrings clattered on its surface. The other hung still from her ear. She would undo her hair once she had removed the earrings, and then take off her shoes. It was part of a routine that Poe had grown to expect and anticipate, even enjoy, really. 

“Text from Hux. He’s invited me to drinks with Ren tomorrow night,” Poe said as he put the phone down on the nightstand on the left side of the bed, took off his suit jacket and hung it up on a hanger on the left side of the closet. Rey’s clothes separated his side of the closet from Finn’s. It had the purpose of averting mix-ups during early morning rushes although Poe and Finn could almost share clothing; so similar were their measurements. Finn’s chest was broader, though, and Poe preferred his trouser legs to break a little lower than Finn’s. 

Rey swiped at her makeup with a wipe. “The both of them? Should I be jealous?” The strains of Finn’s singing drifted into the room through the shut bathroom door, and Poe smiled, watched Rey smile, also, in the mirror. 

“No more than you already are,” he said, which was the absolute truth. Poe remembered the intensity in Hux’s gaze, the way it had softened when Hux had stepped back, decided to talk to Ren. No matter what he did, Poe was fairly sure, there was little to no chance that his antics would even manage to strain the fiber of Hux and Ren’s relationship.

\---

The place Hux had referred to happened to be a small, intimate bar near the local university campus, the kind of place that would be packed with students in the middle of the semester. It was currently half-empty in the middle of winter break, and the staff present were familiar with Kylo Ren when the three of them stepped out of the cold into its dim lighting and hardwood floor.

They sat in one of the dimly lighted booths. A waitress brought Hux and Ren’s drinks without even asking, and Poe ordered a whisky sour. He felt oddly hemmed-in, squeezed against the aged cork-paneled wall, beer labels rustling against the sleeve of his overcoat from where they had been pinned up with thumbtacks. Hux sat next to him, and Kylo Ren took the seat across from them. The dim light bounced off his dark eyes, lent him a vaguely manic look as he sipped at his gimlet. The cocktail glass sweated in his long-fingered hands, looked ridiculously delicate in his grip. 

Hux toyed with his own drink, Lillet Blanc in a wineglass over a slice of orange, but did not touch it, waited until the waitress deposited Poe’s whisky sour before him. He had smiled at her, as she left, and then he picked up his glass and took a large, grateful sip. 

“You’ve been flirting with my boyfriend,” Ren said as Poe put his glass down, his rich voice charged with a blend of annoyance, indulgence, and flirtatiousness on his end. 

“I have. I’ll stop if it makes you both uncomfortable,” Poe said, and meant it. People had boundaries, and sometimes those boundaries didn’t match up with his own. It was the way things worked. It would be a pity, though, Poe thought as he considered Hux sitting beside him, close enough that their elbows were touching. His hair looked bloody in the bar’s dim light, and the lamp above their table played wonderfully on the bones of his face. 

“Hux is my boyfriend,” Ren shrugged eloquently, drank more. “Not my possession. He gets to make his own decisions. I just want to know he’ll be safe with you.”

“On my honor,” Poe looked Ren in the eyes, decided not to point out the fact that if he tried anything that Hux did not okay, he would probably murder him in swift, efficient retaliation. The both of them would, and if they didn’t Phasma probably would. 

Poe felt a tremor run through Hux then, right next to him as he dipped his head low over the wineglass before him, shook his head in a slow arc. Poe realized then that Hux was laughing – silently, but still – and it struck Poe again just how lucky Kylo Ren was. “I’m sorry,” Hux said as he tried to collect himself, “It’s just that honor is a peculiar concept to apply to you. Or me, for that matter.”

“I never said it was a conventional sense of honor,” Poe said. He probed his feelings, found more amusement than insult, his pride mollified by the infectiousness of Hux’s silent laughter. 

“No,” and then vague tiny miracle, Kylo Ren was smiling too, that sensual mouth curving lopsided in his narrow face. “It’s not like anything we do qualifies as honorable. But I am telling you the truth when I say I want to know he’ll be safe.”

“You know I’m clean,” Poe said with an easy shrug. They had all been tested for HIV and hepatitis prior to commencing this job, and had shared the results openly. It was a reality of the work. Extraction involved intravenous drug administration and accidental needle sticks were common in the field. Extractors who failed to comply were informally blackballed, and the news network spread those names and faces very quickly. 

“And you know we are,” Hux said, “Ren and I are fluid-bonded, but we’re not looking to add a third.”

“Safe sex is not a problem for me,” Poe agreed, “Ren can even watch us if he wants to.”

Kylo Ren nodded, his gaze serious again. “I was coming to that,” he said, “I want to observe.”

“Not participate?” Poe teased, just a little. The thought was appealing. Very appealing. Hux and Ren were such a visual contrast together, charcoal drawing and watercolor painting side-by-side, and he thought again of the bruise he had spotted on the side of Hux’s neck, of a similar mark low on Ren’s hip just above the low waistband of his trousers, scratch marks on the back of Ren’s neck rising pink over the edge of his t-shirt collar. Then he thought about how they probably fucked like they were eating each other alive, felt his pulse quicken with a blend of fear, mortality and arousal as he wondered how he might fare sandwiched between them. 

“Rest your fears, Poe Dameron,” Ren said, seeming to read Poe’s thoughts, “I promise not to interfere unless something goes terribly wrong.”

 _I’m not this transparent, am I?_ Poe thought. “I will not be intimidated by you, Kylo Ren,” he said with mock seriousness before he drank again from his glass. Dutch courage, he thought, panacea for the pangs of mortality induced from sitting in such close proximity to these two predators.

“But you are,” Hux said softly, his voice pitched just loudly enough to carry over the background music. “And that just makes you more fuckable, in my opinion.”

Hux’s breath was warm against Poe’s ear, and he felt a faint tremor in his hand as he put his whisky sour down on the worn wooden table. “Are you trying to be the death of me, Dr. Hux?”

“Perhaps,” Hux said after a long swallow of his Lillet, his pink tongue darting lascivious to pick up a spilled drop on his lip. “Yes. Not any of the big ones, however.” The look on his face took the words out of Poe, rendered him temporarily mute as Ren laughed softly, indulgently at the effect his boyfriend was having. 

Poe drained his glass then, found his tongue in the acid buzz of the bourbon and lemon juice, sighed. “What are we waiting for, then?” 

Hux knocked back the remainder of his Lillet, the ice clattering off his teeth. “This,” he said, shrugged. 

They paid and left.

\---

The drive back to the place Hux and Ren shared was a short one, and Poe was a little thankful that Hux was doing the driving tonight, because he was fairly sure he would not have been able to keep most of his clothes on if Hux had been next to him in the back seat of their rental Audi.

They lived in a leased third-floor apartment in a converted shop building, the ground floor occupied still by a used bookstore that had shuttered up for the night. The sweet-dusty smell of crumbling paper, salty old leather and pipe tobacco had followed them up the narrow stairs to reach jealously through the gap under the door. 

The interior was nothing special – indifferent furniture and old wallpaper, but it was warm and pleasant. Ren shut the door behind them, locked it without setting the deadbolt, and Poe glanced down the hallway to the dimly-lit bedroom at its end, noticed a shut door closer to the living room they stood in. 

“Who else lives here? Phasma?” Poe asked. It made the most sense if she did, and it made for better operational security, besides. 

“Yeah,” Ren said as Hux hung his cashmere overcoat up on one of the hooks by the door. “She’s out right now.” There was a slick rasping of cloth as Ren squirmed out of his own coat, a heavily lined hooded raincoat in a surprising olive drab. Poe observed Hux’s aesthetics all over the thing, wondered if he had finally become sick of Ren’s business goth wardrobe. It wouldn’t surprise Poe if he had, even if Kylo Ren was currently one of the few people alive who could make the look work so well. 

“I guess you told her about your plans for the evening,” Poe surmised. He took off his own coat, glanced at the three hooks beside the door, unsure whether or not to occupy the third or not. Ren solved his dilemma by taking Poe’s coat up and hanging it over his own. 

“We thought the noise might bother her.” Hux sat down briefly on the loveseat in front of the fireplace, unlaced his boots and took them off. Marks in the carpet showed where a large armchair had once been, showed also the tracks in the pile where it had been dragged down the hallway leading to the bedroom. 

“Yes.” Ren leaned in to Poe, just a little too close. “You look like a screamer to me.”

“I thought tonight was for Hux?” Poe asked, genuinely curious. He felt stifled all of a sudden; the room too warm, and he unbuttoned his suit jacket and took it off. 

“Maybe,” Ren took hold of Poe’s necktie, kissed the end of it briefly, “It doesn’t mean I’m not a passenger even if he’s doing the test-driving.” 

“I feel so objectified,” Poe said, laughing, and then words were no longer enough as Hux came up to him, stood close behind him, heat and breath through his hair, clever hands brushing up the front of his shirt, fingers slipping through the placket of his shirt, tugging at the knot of his necktie. Ren took a step back and gave them room, and Poe was no longer sure if they’d make it to the bedroom. Maybe Ren could just sit down on the loveseat and watch while Hux ravished him, carpet burn be damned. 

And then Ren cleared his throat, nodded in the direction of the hallway, and Hux was letting go of Poe with a last insistent kiss on the back of his neck, just above the disheveled collar of his shirt. “Go on. Have fun. I’ll be with you two shortly. Just getting another drink.” 

Poe dropped his jacket on the living room floor as Hux half-dragged him to the bedroom, kicked his loafers off in the hallway, and then they were falling into the iron-framed bed together, on top of the comforter and sheets. “Wait,” he hissed to Hux as he lay back on the left side of the bed. The SIG holstered behind his hip was starting to dig into his back, and he wriggled out from Hux’s grip to unfasten his belt, remove it and the holster as well as the backup in his left pants pocket. The belt went onto the floor, the guns onto the nightstand. The pillow beneath Poe’s head smelled faintly like strawberries, and he knew as surely as he knew his own need and desire that he was lying on Kylo Ren’s side of the bed, underneath his boyfriend. Hux had shrugged off his own jacket when Poe had paused to remove his holstered sidearms, removed his own shoulder holster and left it on the nightstand on his own side of the bed. 

Hux kissed like a drowning man, hot and wet and all gasping breath, and he left Poe with slightly sore lips, those strong fingers tangling in and tugging at his hair even as he fumbled with the ridiculous line of buttons on the front of Hux’s waistcoat – thank you, Savile Row. Then Ren came into the room with a shotglass in one hand and Poe’s jacket and shoes in the other. He put his drink on the nightstand beside Poe’s guns, draped Poe’s jacket over an empty valet stand and left his shoes at its base. He then sat down in the old leather armchair next to the bed and took off his boots and his sweater, collected his drink. 

“Why do I suspect you’ve both done this before?” Poe asked when Hux finally let him up for air. 

“You thought you were the only one here with an unconventional lifestyle?” Ren asked from the armchair, and Hux had laughed, carefree and giddy as Poe flipped him over onto his back and finished the job of unbuttoning his waistcoat, continued on to the knot of his necktie. The sight of his own hands, whiskey and tobacco darkness against Hux’s watercolor skin, took his breath away and he had to concentrate hard to tug at the half-Windsor knot nestled up against Hux’s throat. 

Hux was flushed, rose full-blown against the white, pearl-buttoned expanse of his shirt, and his mouth glistened wetly in the dim light as he took his watch and cufflinks off, left them with a tiny clatter on the nightstand where he’d left his sidearm as Poe freed him from the silken leash of his necktie, unbuttoned his shirt collar, bent his head to the heat and pulse of his neck, that tiny wedge of skin exposed at the open collar of his shirt, at the v-neck of his undershirt. Hux groaned appreciatively, squirmed under Poe as he ventured up Hux’s neck to the underside of his jaw, leaving a trail of hot kisses behind him. 

Ren shifted in his chair as Poe nibbled on Hux’s right earlobe, teased him with teeth and tongue, and the armchair creaked softly beneath Ren’s weight as Poe finished unbuttoning Hux’s shirt, pulled it open to ruck up the hem of his undershirt and kiss his way downward as he busied his fingers on the buttons of Hux’s fly. So many layers, Poe thought – like the best kind of Christmas present – wonderful to behold, interesting to unwrap, and delectable in consumption.

Hux moaned softly and bucked his hips, ground up against Poe’s touch as he worked his way slowly down the button fly of his trousers, and Poe had to stop and laugh, his breath hot against the hardness of Hux’s pale, heaving belly. “I thought I was supposed to be the screamer, here?” Poe asked playfully, grinned again at Hux’s sudden intake of breath as he stroked him through his trousers. Those buttons were probably good for friction, Poe thought, and he mentally thanked Savile Row tailors and their arcane ways again, this time with no sarcasm intended.

“That’s because I haven’t done anything to you yet,” Hux said in a long shuddery rush, when he could speak again. 

“You do have such a formidable reputation, Doctor,” Poe said as Hux slid his suspenders off his shoulders to facilitate further undress, let Poe tug his trousers lower, down his hips. “But really, you’re just a meek little pussycat, aren’t you? A big ginger kitty,” Poe breathed as he leaned down over the low waistline of Hux’s silk boxers, savored the warm fabric against his lips as he teased Hux’s erection through the silk. A slippery wetness soaked through, sweet against Poe’s tongue, and Hux smelled of sweat and musk and pre-ejaculate under the wood and smoke of his cologne, overwhelming Poe’s senses with the realness and presence of him. 

Poe heard Ren’s breathing beside him, paused to look at him, at his white-knuckle grip on the arm of his chair. He held his full shotglass still in his right hand, gin forgotten, his fingerprints steaming and blooming on the glass as though his spirit yearned to separate from his body, to come and join them in bed. 

And then Hux seized Poe’s forearms and rolled him over gently but firmly, his voice hoarse with frustration and desire. “I’m not _your_ meek ginger kitty, Dameron,” he growled low and deep in his throat, and Poe was content to lie back as he finished undressing, kicking his trousers off and slipping out of his shirt, pulling his undershirt over his head. Poe reached up and helped him tug his boxers off, took a deep breath at the sight of him, pale and naked except for the strop he wore still around his left wrist, flushed to the chest, his shoulders and the tops of his arms dusted with a galaxy of freckles. 

Ren made a sound then, bit his lip as Poe turned to look at him. “I thought you’d washed that off,” he murmured to Hux, who laughed briefly and shook his head. 

“I wanted Poe to see, first.” Hux lay down on the left side of the bed, propped himself up on his elbows, and Poe saw, saw the dark smudges down his back, right of the bumps in his spine.

“It’s a… poem?” Poe asked as he picked out the letters written carefully on Hux’s skin. 

“It’s a sonnet,” Hux said, staring directly at Ren in his armchair as Poe ran his fingers along the lines, watched them smudge further under his touch. “Ren wrote it last night.”

Ren cleared his throat and returned Hux’s stare, and it was as though they existed in a world of their own, one that Poe could touch but never truly inhabit, as Ren started to recite the lines. 

_“i give myself to you, entire and whole:_  
_my crucible, where porcelain meets fire,_  
_distilling what is purest from my soul;_  
_my altar candle and my funeral pyre.”_

Hux turned back to Poe as Ren spoke, unzipped the fly of his trousers with slow deliberation, and Poe knew now that it was his turn to be savored, appreciated in onion-skin moments as Hux undressed him further, abraded those raspberry lips on Poe’s permanent five O’clock shadow. 

_“consume me, love, my bitter and my sweet._  
_leave nothing but the ashes of a man._  
_and in the centre, glowing with the heat,_  
_your science finds the core of who i am,_  
_transmuted into gold. i cannot see_  
_this value in myself, without your light_  
_and all that it reveals; your alchemy_  
_will take my baser self, and set me right.”_

Hux’s mouth burned hot against Poe’s skin, each kiss setting his nerves alight with painful delight, and he lay stunned by the rawness of Hux and Ren’s intimacy. It would make him jealous if he had been the insecure type, but insecurity was not something that he worried himself much about. Poe could only acknowledge that he would never be that close to either of them no matter what he did, and it humbled him to find such passion and devotion still present in the imperfect world. 

_“i find my true salvation in your art;_  
_your ultimate creation is my heart.”_

“Let’s see if I can make you scream,” Hux whispered in Poe’s ear as Ren’s marvelous voice trailed off into silence, the hoarse sound of his breathing again, and Poe had arched his back as Hux tore open a foil packet, unrolled the slippery tension of a condom down the shaft of Poe’s aching cock. 

“How do you propose to do that?” Poe managed when he could breathe again; bit his lip at the sight of Hux crouching and lubricating himself, and Ren moaned from his vantage point beside the bed, the leather armrest creaking under his merciless grip. Poe took the bottle from Hux, spread more lubricant on his sheathed cock, and then waited for his reply. 

“Let’s go for a test drive, Poe Dameron,” Hux whispered as he straddled Poe’s hips. Poe reached up for Hux, ran a thumb along the bony ridge of his iliac crest, guided his movements gently as he rocked down slowly, easily against the greased head of Poe’s cock. Poe reached down with his free hand, guided himself in a slow experimental thrust upward against the Hux’s tight asshole, and then his eyelids fluttered as he felt slick heat envelop him, that wonderful tension of Hux’s internal muscles velvety around the sweet ache of his cock. 

“Ohh,” Hux moaned as Poe thrust instinctively upward into him once, twice, licked his lips as he caught his breath and then fell into rhythm with Poe as he shifted his weight backwards. 

“Still not screaming,” Poe managed to gasp between thrusts, and then Hux was gasping his assent in a most delightful way as Poe continued to ravish him mercilessly. 

“Yes,” Hux moaned, eyes shut and head thrown back with abandon as he moved with and against Poe, the both of them oblivious to Ren’s avid gaze and heavy breathing, the twitch of his hips with each of Poe’s upward thrusts. 

“I thought you were going to make me scream?” Poe managed to ask him as they slowed down a little to catch their breath, and then Hux was grinning like a maniac, his teeth so white against his lips and the flush of his face as he started to buck like a wild animal, sliding down on Poe’s cock hard enough to bruise his hips. It was all Poe could do to hold on to Hux, to rut helplessly up against him.

“Screaming yet?” Hux said breathlessly. His voice husked out in fast eager pants as he reached down to stroke himself fast and hard, in time with his own movements. 

“Make me,” Poe growled through gritted teeth as he rode the edge of his own climax, felt the eager shudder running down Hux’s spine. He could still win this one, Poe thought, laughed internally at the thought of trying to win a fuck, and then Hux was screaming, his back arching hard as drops of spunk spilled hot onto Poe’s chest and belly. 

Poe felt Hux tensing with the shudder of his climax, and then thrust up one more time, again as his orgasm overtook him and sank its teeth in the back of his spine, sending bursts of lightning through his nerves, zinging through his skull, spilling out of him in long, aching gouts as he shouted his relief, surprised at his own shout while Hux sank down on top of him, spent, fucked-out, beaten. 

Poe waited until he could move again, tugged the condom off his softening cock and knotted its open end. “You screamed,” he said wearily, breathlessly, “I win.” 

“There wasn – wasn’t any failure condition about my screaming,” Hux laughed shakily as he curled up on his side of the bed, “Just that I’d make you.” 

“Are you always this competitive?” Poe asked Hux, watched him catch his breath. He was still a compelling sight with his hair disheveled, fresh, faint bruises starting to bloom on his skinny hips. His eyes were bright and wild, pupils huge in his endorphin rush, and he smiled, wild and wicked as Poe heard the sound of a glass chattering against teeth. Poe turned his head to catch Ren throwing back his shot of gin, and his hand shook as he lowered the shotglass away from his mouth, still breathing hard. Ren looked an utter wreck. 

“Are you sure you’re comfortable over there?” Poe asked him.

Ren’s lips moved soundlessly, and then he swallowed again. “Yes.” He looked anything but.

Hux gave Ren a long look, and then glanced at Poe, shrugged easily as Poe read the look, the shrug, everything, saw the shiver of anticipation run down Ren’s spine as he slid out of bed and crawled naked to Ren’s feet. 

“You don’t look very comfortable at all, Kylo Ren,” Poe told him. There was a soft thud to Poe’s left as Ren dropped the shotglass on the carpeted floor. It bounced once on the thick pile, and then was forgotten as Poe leaned into Ren’s lap, felt with his lips for the tab of the zipper on Ren’s trousers. 

Ren let out a tiny whimper when Poe found it, gripped the small piece of metal between his teeth and tugged carefully downwards. The front of Ren’s boxer-briefs were soaked through with pre-ejaculate, and Ren arched his back and slid further down in his armchair as Poe sprang him free. 

Poe looked down appreciatively, then back up to meet Ren’s gaze. “I thought at first that bear-killer round on your revolver was compensation for something, but I’m quite glad to say I’m wrong.” He heard Hux’s tired laughter, but Ren did not say anything, only bit at his own lip in anticipation. 

And then Poe leaned down into Ren’s lap again, took the heat and throb of that straining cock in his mouth. Ren moaned once, a long, desperate song, and then came a series of soft pops – a sound that Poe realized was Ren’s short fingernails digging through the worn leather on the chair’s arms to sink into the upholstery padding below. 

Poe closed his eyes and immersed himself in the touch, the scent and taste of Ren, of the sharp salty bite of sweat and the smell of his skin, musk and civet and leather of his cologne and the clean smell of strong soap, the slippery sweetness of pre-ejaculate mingling with his own spit. Ren’s cock was thick and Poe could feel his lips numbing with each bob of his head, the sensitive ridge of Ren’s raphe and frenulum against his tongue. 

Ren had arched up and off the seat and back of the armchair, his muscles taut and tense as Poe took hold of his right hip, slipped his other hand under the hem of Ren’s t-shirt to stroke his chest and tease his left nipple with a flick of his thumb. Poe listened to Ren’s urgent breathing, felt him shift more in the chair, and he smiled mentally as he pulled almost completely back, taking only the head of Ren’s cock in his mouth. He found the slit of his meatus, swirled the soft velvet of his tongue in maddening circles around the glans, the sensitive coronal ridge. 

Poe was rewarded then with a sharp gasp and the soft groan of tortured armrests under Ren’s white-knuckled grip, and then Ren was shuddering, bucking upwards as Poe swallowed again and again, Ren’s spunk salty, bitter, faintly chlorine smelling in the back of Poe’s throat as he spent himself with a long, grateful sob of relief. 

Ren’s eyes were closed when Poe let him go and rocked back on his heels – his knees starting to ache a little despite the deep pile of the carpet. He could not remember ever seeing Ren this peaceful before, but then this was the first time he had been this close and personal with Ren, in any event. 

“I told you I wasn’t intimidated,” Poe said as he sat back down on the bed, glanced at Hux, who had been watching the previous proceedings with great interest, his pointed chin propped on a hand. 

“Maybe not this time,” Hux shrugged, rolled over easily to give Poe more room, “But you might want to be careful in the future. We know how you fuck now, Dameron.”

“You might not get off so lucky in the future,” Ren agreed from the armchair. Poe glanced at Ren to his right, and Hux to his left, and nodded acknowledgement. 

“So this really was a test drive?” Poe asked as he settled back down on Ren’s side of the bed, propped himself up on his elbows so he could keep watching them both. 

“We weren’t sure how much you could take,” Ren shrugged, and then he stretched his arms upward, reached for the ceiling before he shifted in the armchair and put his clothes into some semblance of decent order. 

“Rey would be upset if we broke you,” Hux grinned, just a little maliciously, and the expression on his face gave Poe palpitations as he considered the course of his future and what exactly he had just landed himself in with these two.

\---

Poe returned to the workshop the next day to find an envelope addressed to him on his side of the desk. There had been no sender, but Hux’s copperplate hand was recognizable anywhere. He tore open the envelope and pulled out its contents – a five-Euro note and the invoice from the day before yesterday, now stamped “PAID”.

He looked up from the invoice, trying to hold back laughter as he saw Phasma field-stripping her 1911 at one of the worktables. She looked up at Poe, met his amused gaze with one of her own. 

“You boys,” she said indulgently, and then grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> So I try to write a big serious AU fic with mind-heisting and dreamshare and people doing impossible things in zero-g but all my brain comes up with is gratuitous smut. You’re welcome anyway.


End file.
